... any idea or notion which is held as a matter of belief, and which is based on authority and accepted without reason, or the application to it of that ground principle in all good work - common sense.
... I do not intend to intimate that the ... catalog is a thing to be disbelieved in and rejected, but rather to suggest that it has the character of a superstition in so far as it is accepted and religiously carried out on grounds that are traditional, rather than on any intelligent conviction that it meets present needs and is good for the future needs for which we must make provision.
William J. Fletcher, Librarian of Amherst College defined superstition, for his own library-related purposes, in 1889, as ...
ReplyDelete